Crazy Mornings, No More!

Yesterday morning was the first day back to school for all 3 kids after Christmas vacation. I am NOT a morning person! I love my sleep, I'll admit it. So our mornings are crazy! Yesterday was the END of my crazy mornings. I can't function like that anymore. I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to round up everything and get out the door and have the kids dropped off by 9am. When I'm done with drop off, I'm feeling frazzled and that was ENOUGH. I was done starting my mornings like that.

For months now, maybe even a year, every night before bed I set the kids clothes out. In the mornings before they come down stairs they will get dressed for the day. They love this. When I don't do it, they scream at me from upstairs 'you forgot to lay our clothes out!'. This consists of their full outfits, pants, shirts, underwear, socks. They get their shoes on downstairs as we are leaving, and put on their jackets.

When Ryan moved out here and started sixth grade I bought him a clothes organizer that has dividers and hangs in his closet. On Sundays, I have him refill his dividers with outfits for the entire week. This way in the morning, he just grabs an outfit and he's ready to go.

I hung hooks in our downstairs closet for the kids jackets, and then 2 hooks on our downstairs closet door for each of their backpacks. (Landon and Lilah).

Yesterday when I got home, I sorted out all of their 'snacky' foods into snack size baggies. So all of their Scooby Snacks, Cheeze Pretzels, Alphabet Cheez Its, etc are all in snack baggies inside the big 'snack box' ready to go. This way too, in the afternoons when they want a snack, it's already into portion control baggies, they aren't grabbing the entire bag of cheeze pretzels and heading to the couch. When the food is gone from the baggie, their snack is done. :-)

When they got home from school, I emptied their backpacks, went thru their folder paperwork, and put their folders back in the folder, got their backpack ready for the next day, and hung them up. I've been doing this, so this isn't anything new.

Then, after dinner, I made their sandwiches, put them in their sandwich containers and put them in the fridge. I put their lunch boxes on the counter and put all of their dry snacks for their lunch in the lunch box, along with their spoon for their apple sauce. So this morning, all I had to do was add their sandwich, their drink, and their apple sauce and it was a frazzle free morning! SOOOO MUCH BETTER!

Each night, I make Ryan make his sandwich and have it ready for the next morning. Last night, I took it a step further. I made him put all of his 'dry' snacks into his lunch box so all he would have to do is add the sandwich, rather than standing at the snack box in the morning and starring at it debating on which snacks he wanted for the day. MUCH BETTER!

I took it a step further...I pre-sorted their cereal for the week. (Landon and Lilah)They like eating it dry. So I put their cereal in snack baggies and put it in a bowl on my counter by the toaster. Last night before they went to bed, I showed them. I told them when they got dressed and came downstairs to come get their breakfast. They were so excited because it was something NEW. It didn't stop there. I filled their morning beverages in their sippy cup and placed them in the fridge, and showed them as well.

This morning was AWESOME. Everything was organized...the kids were fed...I got to lay in bed a few extra minutes, and I left the drop off line at school feeling totally UNFRAZZLED. Success!

It's just the little tweaks in the schedule to make things flow so much better! I'm loving it, and wondering why I didn't implement this months ago! :-)